Questions for top Christians who see Israel as 'God's servant'

Could you clarify this.  Do you accept that the latest war on the Palestinians is actually a pre-emptive attack of self-defence, in the light of the Arabs wanting Israel's total destruction?  Is it fair enough to get on with the destruction of your enemy when that enemy so brazenly and frequently declares that it wants your "annihilation"?

Are you happy/comfortable/content with the present operation in Gaza (to virtually wipe Hamas off the face of the map) as a tit for tat response (in line with OT/Jewish ethics) to the three teenagers murdered in June in the West Bank?

Is ITN's coverage more acceptable to you?  Is Channel 4 News OK?  What news channel/media would you recommend?

Two important questions for an Israel expert, please!

Israeli society seems to be under the sincere conviction that when not warring against Hamas, the few Hamas rockets that don't get shot down over Israel, will wipe them all off the face of the earth.  Do you know how many Israelis have been killed/injured by the rockets fired from Gaza between the last three Gazan wars?  I don't know and wonder if the death toll of Israelis is so huge it must now justify Israel's third war on Gaza.  I would like to know what Fox News/Israel Information Office says are the figures of Israelis killed by Hamas rockets when Israel is not attacking Gaza.

Over 66 years, the Muslims do seem to be obviously incompetent at driving Israel into the sea, to be gone for ever.  Yet, all the Israelis back their government in doing the very thing to the Palestinians that they, the Palestinians are so useless at doing to the Israelis, viz removing them from the map of the world.  The Arabs are all talk; the Jews are all action over driving their enemy into the sea.

Over 66 years, the Israelis seem to be incompetent at avoiding UN buildings, personnel and sheltering Palestinians when carrying out their attacks.  The Arabs seem to have a better track record in this regard.

Israel's government must be aware that not even the concentration camps of the 1930s and 40s were able to wipe out the Jews.  Yet, they sincerely believe that the Hamas rockets, when not at war with Gaza, from the beseiged and blockaded Gaza will so bring out about their genocide that they must get in with the killing of as many Palestinians as possible, first.

In three wars and weeks of re-occupation of Gaza, the Israelis have still failed to wipe Hamas off the face of the earth or, even to blow up all their tunnels and to bomb all their rocket launching sites.  Therefore, this does make the point for me, that the IDF must be as useless as Hamas at fighting wars to a successful and permanent solution to the problem of having such disruptive neighbours between them and the sea.  If they cannot drive them into the sea, perhaps they need to try using their nuclear (or chemical and biological) weapons to wipe out Gaza?  Then, problem solved.

Are both sides suffering war as God's punishment for the Gazans living in part of the Promised Land meant for Israel, only and, punishment for the Israelis for giving it away in 2005?

Clearly, both sides need to have much more war war and many more deaths and injuries - and continued failure from war - until, eventually, they try jaw jaw to get a durable solution.

Meanwhile, for us good, clean living, sensible Brits who never, ever attack other countries ourselves, all this slaughter is great for our economic growth and employment from the weapons sold to both sides.

My true Christian friends all seem to support the same side.  My lily livered, wishy washy, liberal Christian friends support the other side.  The atheists stand agog at the children of Abraham slugging it out, once more.  However, that has good pedigree when the God of one side commands genocide if the holy war keeps within the rules of Deuteronomy 20 v 1-20.

"Those whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad."  What the two faiths are doing to each other is mad and immoral but, is true to form for the third Abrahamic faith, too and for all of poor, heaving humanity.  Thus our 'suicide' and ecocide continues apace.

Violence gets the world's attention but Palestine must try non-violence

Dear 'Hasja'  (since I don't know you - no abusive response, please)

Last week, I heard on BBC Radio 4's 'Today' programme a Palestinian MP and former Presidential candidate, mention the word, 'non-violence' half a dozen times.  He said that he had been urging non-violent resistance on his fellow compatriots for many years but that it had fallen on deaf ears, so far.  He said Hamas had, quietly, already changed its position over Israel.  What was his name?

Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jnr commanded the moral high ground, as did the Indians who also chose non-violence during the Amritsar massacre by the British Army.  Eventually, India gained its independence from the British Empire.

In Northern Ireland, the sectarian men of violence (including the British Army), eventually, tried non-violence.  Ceasefires led to the peace process of talks, compromise, consensus, give and take and, a large drop in the numbers of killings.  Could Israel not talk and act on wanting a similar peace process, once more?

Could Israel not join with that Palestinian MP and, at least, talk non-violence, to begin with?  Israel's policy over 66 years has not worked in giving them peace and security and friendship with its Palestinian neighbours.

Could Israel not make use of the UN's General Secretary or, make use of the knowledge and experiences of both sides in Northern Ireland?

Could Israel consult with Angela Merkel to get her ideas and help to, eventually, get a resolution?  Or Desmond Tutu?

Violence gets the world's attention but Palestine must try non-violence and top level talks with world leaders - followed by Israel coming to the table, too.

Both sides might try a cycle of non-violence, compromise and constraint and never revenge to improve their prospects.

The persecuted Jews, the problem and biblical prophecy

"The Jews have been a persecuted nation throughout history ..."​  (David Gray)

Therefore,​​ that should make them even more zealous ​to ​​act in friendship and generosity​​ ​and compassion with and for ​​their Arab neighbours​.  Peter Ustinov once said, very many years ago, "The Jews were the first victims of the Nazis and the Palestinians are the second."  The more enlightened passages of Scripture show how we all are meant to act in generosity towards the stranger in our midst.  This should especially be the case when both Jews and Christians in the rich and powerful West (that includes Israel), have been in the ascendancy militarily and economically since 1945.  USA/UK/Israel have had so much - land and resources and 'stuff'.  Yet, Scripture and humanity indicate that we have to share our good things and our land.  Israel gave away land (Gaza) in 2005 and gave away part of the Promised Land, in the process.  Unfortunately, this was without a long term agreement with the Palestinians.  It was not part of a settlement with the Palestinians.  Utter idiocy!  But then, the State of Israel is so very principled it cannot bring itself to talk to terrorists to get a peace agreement - unlike Thatcher, Major and Blair over N Ireland.

Scripture says, "Examine yourself to see whether you are in the faith."  Israelis might search their consciences to try and uncover why they are so hated by their neighbours, especially by the Palestinians.

I might be wrong, but I had always thought that the Christians had done more persecution of the Jews than Muslims.  Certainly, that was the case in the 20th century, of course.  I also wonder if the Jews had ever been a nation before 1948 - I don't know.  Had there ever been a nation of Israel before then?  Yahweh did give them His Promised Land in the 1st century BC from the Canaanites and other conquered tribes.  It also seems that the people of Israel were not into empire building, unlike the Christians who got so much of the world with their colonies.  This was contrary to what Jesus rejected in the Temptations.

"The problem between Jews and Arabs goes back way before the post-war settlement in 1947 - and arguably back to Biblical times."  (David Gray)

From what I have picked up, since the time of Abraham, Christians, Jews and Arabs have lived in harmony for many more years than they have been at each others throats.  They also have much more in common than the secular, the irreligious or, even the adherents of the other faiths.  The supposedly Christian nations seem to have the worst track record towards both Jews and Muslims.  Certainly, this was the case in the last century and, so far, we have not done much better in this century as regards the Muslims.  'The problem', therefore is us in the rich and powerful West that also includes Israel.  For me, the problem is our militarism (Zechariah 4 v 12), our own self-interests around the globe and, our grabbing of land and resources for our own economic growth and rising standards of living.

It may have been only after the 1 World War that problems arose between Jews and Arabs when Jews fled Christian, then Nazi persecution from Europe to find refuge in Palestine.  They then started rubbing shoulders with the nomads of that region who were Arabs.  Land was then bought and sold.

Israel has the additional problem, before the whole world that does nothing because it is so militarily powerful, of rather obviously grabbing ever more land in Judea, Samaria and east Jerusalem for its burgeoning population.  In other words, profiting from its aggression in the Six Day War in 1967 when it gained Sinai, the West Bank of the Jordan and the Golan Heights from Syria.  

" ... the state of Israel declared in 1948 as a fulfilment of Biblical prophecy" (David Gray)

My problem with Biblical prophecy is this.  It may have been fulfilled in the past, then undone, fulfilled again and so on.  In other words, multiple fulfilments of the same prophecy over the centuries.  For example, the Lord punished Israel by sending her into exile when she disobeyed His commands.  In other words, she first gained the Promised Land through genocide; it was confiscated from her as a punishment; she got it back in 1948 through terrorism.  What she has now, is nothing near all of it (see Joshua 1 v 4) and she gave Gaza away, too in 2005, without any agreement from even Fatah or the Palestine Authority, I believe.

Secondly, the Lord has biblical prophecy reserved for only one nation - his only Chosen Nation - out of 193.  That one nation, Israel, the Lord has promised will be a blessing to every other nation, including the Muslims.  Actually, the family of the Children of Abraham of Jews, Christians, Muslims are all promised by Yahweh to bless all the other families of humanity in Genesis 12 v 2-3.  "I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing  ...  By you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves."  When were all families blessed or, is that still to be fulfilled?

The Chosen Nation is secular/irreligious, unbelieving, nuclear armed to the teeth, one of the most military powerful (and uses its military might), Westernised/Americanised Israel, too!

"Israel, God's (suffering) Servant" (book by Torrance and Taylor, Paternoster, 2007)

My thoughts prompted by reading this book written by two Bible believing Christians, from a Jewish/Christian/Israeli point of view

It seems to me that Palestinians are the new Jews from the way they are so unpopular with some Arabs in this century and last and, yet again, by being killed and wiped off the face of the earth by the State of Israel in even larger numbers than the Ukrainian, pro-Russian separatists who very likely shot down the Malaysian airliner.  The Palestinians are the poor and oppressed, as Jews have been at times in their history.  Our good, upstanding Brits are still manufacturing armaments to fuel the killing of mainly Palestinian civilians and, killing almost, totally, IDF soldiers in God's suffering servant, Israel.

We are more agitated by the death of 298, almost all white European or Australian, than by three times as many Palestinians or, a similar number of Iranian's that our side shot down in 1988 in that air bus massacre.  As a result, we impose sanctions/penalties on our long time enemy, Russia ("Russia's leaders deny they are providing support to the separatists." - from 'i', 17 June 2014) but turn a blind eye to Israel's war crimes and the many fewer crimes of Hamas on Israeli civilians.

No Muslim nation has ever been a superpower.  Their empires were fewer and smaller than the Christian European ones.  Their slave trade was also smaller and, probably, shorter lasting than ours.  It was not the Muslims who brought humanity 10 years of world war or WMD.

We call Israel, God's Servant yet, she is a largely secular, Western, consumerist and capitalist nation that is even included in the Eurovision Song Contest, while all her surrounding Arab nations are excluded!

God's servant is one of the most military powerful nations on earth.  Very different from our Christian Messiah, Jesus Christ who is the suffering servant, who refused to save himself by using the sword.
God's suffering servant, Israel has a tiny minority of true Christians, who are Bible believing.  Yet, we insist she, Israel is God's servant who will play the major part when God winds things up and Christ returns at the end of the age.

We would say that God has blessed her servant with riches, skills and resources that have made the desert bloom.  We say that she alone is God's Chosen Nation that, with the Christians and Muslims, are all the children of Abraham.  From getting on for three thousand years ago, they were all meant to be a blessing to all the other nations, according to God's promise in Genesis 12 v 3.  "All the families of the earth will be blessed through you (Abraham)."  Again, "I will cause you (Abraham) to become the father of a great nation." (Genesis 12 v 2)  In other words, the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims are all meant to be one great nation, according to Yahweh, who will bless all other peoples on the earth.  This promise of God has never been fulfilled.

For many years, we have called Israel, God's suffering servant.  Yet, this is the same Israel that joined forces with the UK and France to attack Egypt during the Suez Crisis.  This is the same Israel that in the name of self-defence has warred in Lebanon and in the surrounding land off and on, over the last 66 years.  For years before 1948, God's servant was using revenge and violence that, finally, ended with the three Jewish terrorist gangs succeeding in bombing and shooting their way to getting the State of Israel.  The British had had enough of their mandate to rule the unruly and departed.  We have had decades of violence through most of the 20th century by God's servant, Israel - some initiated by her and some in revenge for Arab/British violence.

If we call Israel God's servant what do we call the USA?  She regards herself as the exceptional nation in being, uniquely, blessed by God.  It is sometimes called manifest destiny, I understand.

Is Israel, God's suffering servant, really behaving like God's true servant in the Gospels?  For me, Israel is far from Paradise and is nothing like the Kingdom of God from the teachings of Christ.

Nuclear weapons stopped the Cuban missile crisis ending in nuclear holocaust

Such was the thought from a friend.  The problem is, however, that the very nations who have the most nuclear weapons to wipe humanity off the face of the earth the greatest number of times, are the very ones who cause the most wars, viz: USA/UK/Israel, Soviet Union/Russia.  Their possession of WMD is no brake on their extremist tendency for warfare and, in this century and last, for killing the greatest number of people ever seen in the history of humanity.  Nukes are no deterrent to aggression and violence.

The enormous stockpile of WMD was no disincentive for the USA to put Jupiter missiles in Turkey near to the border with USSR, nor was it a discouragement to the USSR in their bid to put missiles (ICBMs) near to the USA landmass.  It was this one-sided, aggressive policy of the West that caused the Cuban missile crisis in the first place.

The truth is, these nukes are so destructive, with the blowback of radiation on the attacker, too that they are just too impractical to be of any use in a crisis or no crisis; in time of war or in time of peace.  Therefore, they are not deterrent.  Why have them when they have to remain unused white elephants, stuck in their underground silos for ever or, having to be moved around the subterranean depths of the world's oceans in a cigar shaped metal tin?

Could these nukes simply bring the thought to these imperious states in the nuclear club that they can throw their weight around in the world?  That they can strut around like self-important, gilded peacocks to use coercion, force, aggression and violence to get their way whenever they want?

Violence gets the world's attention but Palestine must try non-violence

Last week, I heard on BBC Radio 4's 'Today' programme a Palestinian MP and former Presidential candidate, mention the word, 'non-violence' half a dozen times.  He said that he had been urging non-violent resistance on his fellow compatriots for many years but that it had fallen on deaf ears, so far.  He said Hamas had, quietly, already changed its position over Israel.  What was his name?

Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jnr commanded the moral high ground, as did the Indians who also chose non-violence during the Amritsar massacre by the British Army.  Eventually, India gained its independence from the British Empire.

In Northern Ireland, the sectarian men of violence (including the British Army), eventually, tried non-violence.  Ceasefires led to the peace process of talks, compromise, consensus, give and take and, a large drop in the numbers of killings.  Could Israel not talk and act on wanting a similar peace process, once more?

Could Israel not join with that Palestinian MP and, at least, talk non-violence, to begin with?  Israel's policy over 66 years has not worked in giving them peace and security and friendship with its Palestinian neighbours.

Could Israel not make use of the UN's General Secretary or, make use of the knowledge and experiences of both sides in Northern Ireland?

Could Israel consult with Angela Merkel to get her ideas and help to, eventually, get a resolution?  Or Desmond Tutu?

Violence gets the world's attention but Palestine must try non-violence and top level talks with world leaders - followed by Israel coming to the table, too.

Both sides might try a cycle of non-violence, compromise and constraint and never revenge to improve their prospects.

Britain set a bad example - the sad evidence

This, I think, is a corrective to much prejudice in favour of Britain by Brits and how the West is best - but, minus me!

1. Britain was the first with concentration camps in the Boer War that killed over 20,000 women and children.
2. Our scorched earth policy in that war was not noble and the war itself was nothing about protecting these British islands of ours.
3. Next, Churchill turned our warships from being fueled by coal to being driven by oil.  He then saw the domination of the Middle East for oil as the prize to gain world mastery.  Not Hitler, after world mastery but our own beloved Churchill actually did it and used those two words of intent when Hitler was still a boy!  (Source: 'The Prize' by Daniel Yergin)
4. In 1914, Churchill turned a friend into an enemy; he then persuaded the War Cabinet to initiate an attack on that Ottoman Empire and, after months of bloody war, lost catastrophically.
5. According to Admiral Lord West, in his Radio 4 series, 'Britain at Sea', we Brits attacked Russia from 1917, after their defeat/withdrawal in the world war.  This was to gain their re-entry on our side against Germany so that German troops would have to be moved from fighting us to fighting the Russians on the eastern front, once more!  After the November armistice of 11 Nov 1918, we carried on our war with Russia because of their Bolshevik government - totally unacceptable to us fine British folk!
6. Our premature entry into the 1914 World War before we were attacked or about to be attacked was wrong.  It was simply unethical and contrary to all normal standards of decency, especially at that time of far greater church-going and Christian belief.  We should have known better.  Our declaration of war on the 4 August was not self defence.  Our security was not threatened.  It was really all about not wanting to see the status quo, the balance of power, changed on the mainland of Europe.  The war was sold to the public as us gallant Brits coming to the defence of poor, trampled all over, Belgium and teaching the wicked Germans a lesson.  Yet, we had a history of keeping to alliances and treaties only when it suited us at the time.  On 4 August 1914, we over-reacted to an assassination 37 days earlier and, then, on the side of the assassin against the wronged party, Austria-Hungary!  That doubly wrong decision by Asquith, Churchill and Grey, et al had the unfortunate effect of leading to 'Britain's 100 years of War' (see 9, below).  Then and now, we just could not resist keeping our noses out of other countries businesses.  Well, we did know what was best for them, after all, just as we do now over the need for EU reform.
7. Throughout the mad month of July 1914, our government did absolutely nothing to bang heads together on the mainland of Europe to prevent a continental war.  Our very stupid and far too early entry into the war turned it into a worldwide conflagration by virtue of our huge empire.
8. We controlled/dominated 30% of the world with the largest empire in the history of humanity.  This is not something to be proud of.
9. Nor, was our untold riches gleaned from the abominable trade in our fellow members of the human family - the slave trade.  More pernicious deaths in the human family of which we were responsible.  Still no reparations paid.  We pocketed the immoral earnings from our filthy trade and have no intention of returning even a penny to a single African nation.
10. Britain was as anti-Semitic as many other European countries were for centuries.  Germany took it to a new and disgusting level between 1933 and 1945 yet, we did nothing officially to save the Jews and the many other minorities in Germany.  There were a handful of very brave people who did all they could, throughout the war, to shelter Jews.  Our government did nothing.  Yet, Churchill at least, it seems, knew what was going on from before war was declared.
11. Our total war, our saturation fire bombing of German towns, cities and other settlements in the closing months of the war, when our victory was assured, was a war crime.  No regret has ever been whispered by us upstanding Brits, despite our fine British values of high morality!
12. Our armed forces ended up slaughtering many more Germans than they did of our people.
13. 'Britain's 100 years of War' - the four page spread in the Guardian, 12 Feb 2014, of proof and shameful evidence of aggression and killing of foreigners in every single year since the 4 August 1914, if not earlier, to the present.
14. Germany's non-aggressive foreign policy has been excellent and exemplary since 1945 (somewhat undone by its membership of NATO!).  The Germans are, rightly, the respected leaders of the EU.  Their energy and transport policy is also superb and sensible.  We Brits could learn much from them.  Instead, we want out - and the sooner the better.

Churchill let the side down decades before Dresden!

In 1914, Churchill turned a friend (the Ottoman Empire) into an enemy by withholding two British built, Ottoman battleships that were about to be handed over to Turkey.  The cost had been raised by Turkish public subscription.  He next initiated an attack on that new enemy in the Dardanelles, in 1915, against advice and without, to begin with, the support of Minister of War Kitchener, lost catastrophically with the foolish Gallipoli campaign.

What incompetence by Churchill.  An incompetent murderer of his own armed forces!  What an idiot.

This kind of British values/patriotism is totally unnaceptable

Even with the wisdom of hindsight, after 100 years, and with the knowledge that 20 million humans were killed horrifically (perhaps, a total 100 million casualties) to stop Germany controlling Europe, we still all think, it was well worth it to be on the 'winning' side!!  Even, when it was a Pyrrhic victory, too leading onto the 1939 European and global war.

Skinny Africa; bloated West

A new version of the skewed map of the world
Why economic growth is a dead end, yet it is what almost everyone votes for!  Our 'Christian', white man's slave trade and the European empires scrambling for Africa in the 19th century resulted in Africa being stripped of their people and resources to make us bloated and the Africans as thin as a rake.  Yet, not a hint of guilt or sorrow from us lot.  Just self congratulation at how well we did with coming up with wonderful Wilberforce!